Saturday, November 17, 2018

Mumbai: Admitting that the attempt to privatise the loss-making Air India was ill-timed, aviation minister Suresh Prabhu Friday said the airline cannot make profit unless the issues around its high financial cost are dealt with.

Notably, government failed to get a suitor for the flag carrier early this year after working on the plan for nearly a year.

"Basically the timing (of Air India privatisation) was wrong. That is the time when the global airline industry was also not doing well," Prabhu said at an award function organized by news portal Moneycontrol here late this evening.

He also said the airline cannot make profit unless "we deal with this financial cost problem."

The minister, however, said for the first time government "sincerely and genuinely" tried to offer Air India ownership to private players.